A video recorded from across the street from the shooting shows Michelle Lee Shirley's car creeping forward as the first gunshot is fired.

Cops fatally shot a mentally ill black woman after police said she used her car like a battering ram, slamming into a pair of occupied squad cars in Southern California, authorities said.

Witnesses told cops a woman in Torrance — about 16 miles south of Los Angeles — was driving erratically about 2:30 p.m. Monday. She crashed into several vehicles and drove on the wrong side of the road — at one point with the airbags already deployed.

Advertisement

After a short pursuit, cops used their vehicles to partially box in the driver's car near a gas station. Video of the incident shows the driver, Michelle Lee Shirley, backing up and striking a police car.

Three cops surrounded Shirley's car. They had their guns drawn and they ordered her to put her hands up. Shirley, 39, lurched forward, smashing into another squad car, cops said. Witness accounts put the number of shots as high as 30. Police haven't said how many times Shirley was hit.

While law enforcement experts say police are generally justified in using deadly force against a motorist charging against them in a vehicle, Shirley's mother says the cops had less lethal options. She also said her daughter suffered from manic bipolar disorder.

"I don't know what was going through her head as she was driving or trying to get away," Shirley's mother, Debra Shirley, told the Daily Breeze. "But why did they have to kill her?"

Her vehicle is shown on the right, with the airbags deployed, after ramming into a cop cruiser next to a gas station in Torrance. (ABC 7)

The mom suggested race played a role in the shooting.

"I feel like they paint people of color with a brush that says, 'you're disposable,'" she said. "I really feel like police are not equipped to deal with mental illness in the field. Shoot the tires or disable the car."

The Bronx district attorney's office is investigating the fatal police shooting last month of Deborah Danner, a 66-year-old schizophrenic woman who swung a bat at an NYPD sergeant. Like Danner, Shirley documented her struggles with her illness.

Shirley spoke about her hallucinations in a video for a mental health campaign known as "It's Up to Us."

"I started sleeping less and less," Shirley said in the 2013 video. "One time I went out and just bought a bunch of plants and gave them away. I shaved my head."

Shirley, the mother of a young boy, suffered through another episode while obtaining her law degree from Loyola University in Chicago. "I ended up setting a fire in my condo because I had this crazy idea that my vent was a fireplace," she said.

It's unclear if Shirley was taking her medication at the time of the fatal shooting, her mother said.